Excellent writing and documentation distinguish Markle’s latest.
Markle introduces the critically endangered Amur leopard, detailing current strategies to augment its numbers using temporarily relocated, zooborn cats.
From a 1950s population of around 2,400, the leopard dwindled to about 30 by 2007, despite increasing conservation efforts by such international groups as the Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance. Markle presents the Amur leopard’s native habitat, eastern Russia's taiga, or boreal forest. She shows the effects of modern logging, mining, farming, and hunting on a rugged region that previously favored the leopard’s large, solitary home ranges and ample access to prey. In 2010, an international coalition began planning for a second, backup population of Amur leopards, recognizing that the remaining cats could be wiped out by disease or disaster. Russia protected the leopards’ last natural habitat in 2012, later designating separate taiga land for the spare population. Markle’s crisp prose conveys the extensive scientific and technological steps needed to ensure that zooborn adult leopards could mate in large enclosures, with mothers teaching their young to hunt. After two years, cubs would enter their wild habitat, with mothers returned to their zoos. Clear, often riveting stock photos show adult cats and cubs in natural habitats as well as zoos, and maps are effectively utilized. Markle invites readers to track the evolving progress of the plan to help the Amur leopard survive.
Excellent writing and documentation distinguish Markle’s latest. (author’s note, additional facts, timeline, glossary, quotation sources, annotated list of web and print resources, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4677-9247-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Certain to steal hearts.
In this follow-up to 2020’s The One and Only Bob, Ruby the elephant is still living at Wildworld Zoological Park and Sanctuary.
She’s apprehensive about her Tuskday, a rite of passage for young elephants when she’ll give a speech in front of the rest of the herd. Luckily, she can confide in her Uncle Ivan, who is next door in Gorilla World, and Uncle Bob, the dog who lives nearby with human friend Julia. Ruby was born in an unspecified part of Africa, later ending up on display in the mall, where she met Ivan, Bob, and Julia. The unexpected arrival of someone from Ruby’s past life on the savanna revives memories both warmly nostalgic and deeply traumatic. An elephant glossary and Castelao’s charming, illustrated guide to elephant body language help immerse readers in Ruby’s world. Goofy, playful, and mischievous Ruby is fully dimensional, as she has shown her bravery during the many hardships of her young life. Applegate deftly tempers themes of grief and loss with compassion and humor as Ruby finds her place in the herd. The author’s note touches on climate change, the illegal ivory trade, and conservation efforts, but the highly emotive framing of the story through the memories of a bewildered baby elephant emphasizes the impact of lines such as “ ‘in Africa,’ I say softly, ‘there were bad people,’ ” without offering readers a nuanced understanding of the broader context that drives poaching.
Certain to steal hearts. (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780063080089
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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